In 1953, Brig. Lloyd initiated the conversion
idea & said that rail passengers would all transfer to untimetabled buses.
3400 buses would give a bus at every station, to be boarded without waiting. BR
had 5600 stations! Displaced UK
rail passengers switch to cars not buses. Operators use timetables &
rosters to work out fleet & manpower needs. His idea was demolished by road
engineers & operators at an Institution of Civil Engineers Debate in 1955.

Lloyd’s costs were based on a 1954 plan -
‘having wide support’ - by Sir David Robertson MP to convert the
161 mile Inverness-Wick line to an all-weather motorway. There was total
opposition to closure when it was proposed - not least by Robertson in
Parliament! There was no call at any other Public Hearings into closures, for
conversion. These included the 174 mile M&GN, 125 mile GC, 100 mile
S&D, 98 mile Waverley line & 71 mile H&B. There were hundreds of
closures. Doubtless, they feared ridicule or worse.

Significantly, road hauliers & bus operators
have not supported conversion. If they did, it would be in the hope that all
motorists would desert the motorways!

Claims that safety on the new roads would be
better than on railways are flawed. Lloyd ignored recent years of good rail
safety to compare current road safety
with BR’s worst year ever - two years earlier (although current data was
publicly available)! His disciples claim that deaths of pedestrians, cyclists
or motor-cyclists can be ignored as they do not go near railways! Users of
level crossings, footpaths, etc are ignored! They claim deaths of trespassers
(aka pedestrians!) be added to rail passenger deaths, but do not add uninjured
trespassers to total rail user! The problem was to be avoided on converted
roads by uncosted frequent fast motor patrols!

Conversionists claim width
& bridge clearance are adequate for roads. The only named line studied, specified alteration of over half of its
bridges, purchase of adjoining private property at 13 places & would
abandon 26 miles of railway - which had 53 bridges & 5 level crossings on a
route mostly on embankments or in cuttings! Buses on tight round trip times
would divert to existing roads to bypass the abandoned section, without
conceding that must cause delay and
extra deaths! Many bridges were not measured.

Changeover plans were mostly vague. One allocated
9 days for a 160 mile line. It could not be done at all with the planned bus
fleet, as simple details were overlooked.

Transwatch says that most people are ‘open
to reason’ on conversion. The reality is that 50 years of propaganda has
not convinced them, MPs nor road biased Ministers - including one who was a
Partner in a road building firm! The Directory of British Associations lists
peak railway conversion league/campaign membership as 75, before it fell to 26,
then zero!

Conversionists publish lists of closed lines
converted. They include 109 yard lengths, routes widened from 12 to 102 feet,
or crossed at a tangent or ‘unclear if road widened onto railway’,
or just ‘very close’! Of over 10,000 miles closed, about 250 has been
converted using a loose definition of the word conversion. Some were widened by
a factor of 8.

Extracts of the views of ‘experts’
(non-transport professionals)are
quoted to promote conversion. Unhelpful comments are replaced by ellipses!
Opponents’ views in the same issues are ignored!

Conversionists used comparisons which would be
jeered at a public meeting. They ignore the length of roads, without which
there would be no traffic, to ‘compare’ only motorways & trunk roads
with railway length, whilst claiming that deaths will fall on the very roads
which they ignore!

Conversionists claim that bus & haulage
services are unsubsidised, & relate road taxes to expenditure on roads.
Consultants have proved that road haulage does not pay its full share of
capital, maintenance & accident costs, and no national study has been made
of bus costs. Taxpayers & motorists subsidise road operators. Without
railways, road drivers’ hours would fall like a stone, wages would soar,
vehicle safety devices would be enforced backed by meaningful checks on
vehicles & drivers, with realistic fines or prison sentences. They could
not remain in business, if these conditions applied now.

Attempts to compare rail & road fuel
consumption are based on ‘comparing’ one hypothetical lorry - fully loaded by weight - with an average for all
freight trains. They are unaware that thousands of lorries are fully loaded by cubic capacity - well below weight
capacity, and thousands more have part loads. Independent studies show that road haulage consumes 5 times as much
fuel per tonne-km as rail. Eddie Stobart’s web page shows that
transferring some traffic to rail gives massive fuel savings.